Stealing is for guitar players (and of course all musicians) part of the daily practice routine. Get the chops like Malmsteen, your tone like Jeff Beck and the note choice of Eric Johnson etc. Nothing wrong with that. In fact everybody who is visiting this site (chops from hell) has the intention to crab some stuff to play and practice or at least to get some inspiration. That's great and necessary to progress your playing. BUT why steal things mentioned above (chops, progressions etc.) only from guitarists? What happens is that everything is growing from the same root. The guitarists-plant dusts itself. This devil circle pushes guitarists nowadays in apart in modern (commercial) music! You only get called for the studio gig to play some typical rock licks/funk licks etc. But I and you know we are able to do much more than that. As we all are here - practised our fingers to the bone - The only chance we see to get demanded is to sit down and focus on (or record) our own wierd stuff. That can be fun but not so financially productively and very lonely as well. My point is: the guitar is such a flexible instrument. How come this instrument doesn`t get the acknowledgment and attention it once had and still deserves. the answer: we are not flexible enough!

What I want u to consider is playing dancefloor - house - techno - ambient - triphop - acidjazz - etc.!!!! Adjust your thinking, expand your style, expand your audience! Playing (rock) guitar doesn`t have to mean that you get stuck in the rehearsal room or your homestudio. Just don`t be stubborn - its all about music, the thing we love and live for.
- for instance, ever tried copying dancefloor synth-arpeggios? double handed? sweeped? stringskipped? inverted? in three part harmony?do it!
- bring your hi-speed bebop licks to an acidjazz jam!
- listen, and recreate everyday life noises on guitar to get the triphop gig
- practice soundeffects on guitar - get the chromatic or wholetone lines flashing abovea a techno groove!
- or go to the biggest (!) houseclub in your town crab the dj and suggest an alliance! you support him playing heavy riffs or leads on his house beats or fill spaces with wide clean chorus/wah chords!

You`ll see that it works cause all these guys have is records and samples. He will love to deal with a human guitarist - he just hasn`t met one cause he is from a different music scene. You`ll end up having a 500 - 1500 people audience, screaming , dancing, having fun, and your are getting payed very well! its just a small step into a strange area but its uncommonly being worth it! Don`t wait for chances to come to you, be the first one to make this step. cross the border! i did the step and didn`t regret it.

Be proud to play guitar - be really open minded and trade styles and people respectfully. Everything will come back to you.

Your`s .. Sven

Sven Stichter was born (1974) and raised in Germany and started to play guitar at age 13. At age 17 he successfully absolved his studies at the American Institude of Music - A.I.M. After having played basically rock and metal he started to grow interest in a larger diversity of styles like pop,country, hip and triphop without loosing focus on the essentials of being a good gitarrist and performer. Tone, musicality, technical ability and a good comercial ear combined with his personal magic made him a well booked musician in a lot of different categories.

With his rockband "Ünlü" he had a number 1 and several top ten hits in turkey, recorded a german R`n`B chartalbum, has played several tv/radio jingles as well as samples for musicsoftware and sample cd`s. During the years he had the chance to record and perform with a lot of excellent musicians like german drummer Ralph Gustke (Chaka Kahn, Xavier Naidoo...), Billy Liesegang (Trevor Horn, Seal, John Wetton, ....), Luis Conte (James Taylor, Madonna, ...).

Currently Sven is playing with different respected house and hiphop djs in the Stuttgart area, is working on his solo album and contributes his ideas and playing for a house album and a retro-soul cd. Liquid Note Records will release one of his tracks on "The Alchimists II".